For those planning to create an animated movie, 3D game, or intuitive UI/UX, one of the first decisions that must be made is choosing a toolset. Different kinds of assets require different kinds of applications. There are many tools you can use to bring your ideas to life with colors, textures, and fluid movement. But how do you know which software suite best suits your needs? In this blog post, we'll examine some of the most widely used tools utilized by 3D animation companies today.

Blender

Blender is an open source, user-focused 3D computer graphic application. This tool supports all processes in the 3D animation pipeline including UV unwrapping, texturing, skeletal rigging, animation, rendering, and scene composition. Blender is a great option for those requiring an all-in-on solution for their content pipeline. It has capabilities for creating animated movies, interactive 3D applications, video games, visual effects, and more. Blender provides cross-platform functionality and works across Mac and Windows systems. This cross-platform inter-portability makes it easy to move projects across different systems. Blender is supported by a passionate open source community, and receives regular updates and feature additions. Best of all, the program costs nothing to use.

Autodesk Maya

Autodesk Maya is used throughout the industry to author 3D game assets, motion graphics, virtual reality television series, movies, and more. Maya allows artists fine-tune their characters and animations quickly and easily. It's able to create complex procedural effects and animations with instanced objects. The brush-based grooming tool provides greater control and accuracy for styling and posing hair and fur of virtual characters. The level of complexity achieved with this software makes it a strong choice for detailed 3D modeling.

Autodesk 3ds Max

A professional 3D computer graphics program that allows creating 3D animations, models, games, and images quickly and efficiently. Autodesk 3DS Max is an excellent choice for modeling, animation, rendering and compositing assets. This software has been widely used to create assets for video game developers, TV commercial studios, and architectural visualization studios. The tool sports powerful features including shaders, radiosity, global illumination, dynamic simulation, normal map creation, and HDR rendering.

What To Expect When Working With 3D Animation Specialists

Using these tools, our artists, animators, and designers work to build high fidelity assets for use in our clients' projects. Our long experience in 2D and 3D animation, allows us to leverage these tools to bring our clients' ideas to life, whether that may be a game or full 3D animated movie. No matter what our clients' concepts are, our dedicated animation team works closely with them to produce visually stunning projects. If you're ready to bring your project to life with the latest cutting-edge visuals, we're ready to work with you. Contact one of our account executives today to find out more about our process.